One day she saw a cow eating the grasses near her. She shuddered as its long tongue twisted itself round their poor helpless stems, and forced them into its great mouth. When it passed her by untouched she felt thankful that she had so many thorns on her arms. "At last I know why I grow like this," she thought. "The prickles are very useful, after all."
When the summer came she began to make her children's cots. She wove the overlapping sides of brightest cot-green, strong and fine. Then, remembering the cow, she put a sharp prickle at each point, and closed the points together. She made warm fluffy beds, and in them she placed her children.
They were tiny, helpless things, white and soft. They looked up at the shining walls as she gently put them in their cots, and asked: "Mother, must we always stay in here?"
"No, dear ones," said the mother; "when you are strong and brown you shall fly out over the world. But rest now while I make your wings."
Nothing daintier or more beautiful than their wings had ever been seen. They were snow-white and glistening, and long and fine, and softer than the softest silk. She tied them firmly to the little shoulders, and in the middle of each wing she placed a long lilac-coloured plume. Then she gently opened the cots a little, and the plume-ends floated out into the sunshine. The children sang for joy.
"We have the most beautiful wings in the world," they sang. "Now we can fly away."
"Not yet," said Thistle-Mother. "Wait a little longer. You must grow brown and strong first."
The lilac plumes glowed in the sunshine, and the cots swung in the summer winds. "Now your time is coming, for your plumes are turning brown," said Thistle-Mother; the children looked at one another, and saw that they themselves had turned from white to lilac.
"Shall we be brown next?" they asked.
"Yes," she answered, "when your plumes are curled and twisted. Rest again."